A key committee of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority took no action Wednesday on whether to recommend the purchase of 370 new diesel buses, leaving the full MTA board to decide next week on the fate of the agency's policy to buy buses that run only on cleaner-burning fuels. The failure to take a stand reflected the deep division among committee members over whether to abandon the MTA's long-standing commitment to buy buses powered by cleaner fuels.

Joining the rush by Detroit to mass-produce alternative-fuel vehicles, Ford Motor Co. on Tuesday unveiled the first all-natural-gas-powered passenger car to be manufactured by a major auto maker. The vehicle--a specially engineered version of the Ford Crown Victoria sedan--is being marketed as a 1996 model to fleets for use as taxis, police cruisers and the like. But consumers may also order the vehicles.

Washington still may charge into the EV arena. In February, President Clinton said he would support research into "clean car" technology--alternative-fuel vehicles, advanced batteries and fuel cells. The government reportedly could provide $1 billion for the efforts. Federal officials appear more interested in developing hybrid-electric vehicles--equipped with both electric and internal-combustion engines--than in pure EVs.

In the basin where the word smog was invented, alternative-fuel vehicles--particularly cars that store energy in flywheels--will be a center of attention at this year's Los Angeles Auto Show, which opens Saturday. Chrysler Corp. will show off its concept of a flywheel-assisted race car, which the company unveiled Wednesday in Detroit. And American Flywheel System, a small company based in Bellevue, Wash.

Gary King suspects he knows how the state will recoup the runaway costs from its botched subsidy program for alternative-fuel vehicles: his wallet. "We're all going to have to pay for this one," said the planning consultant from Chandler as he stood in an absentee voting line Monday. The subsidy program, expected to cost about $3 million, will run some $483 million, and the fallout might show on election day as the Republican Legislature feels the heat.

President Bush and U.S. auto executives Monday promoted alternative fuels but did not discuss in any meaningful way their major point of disagreement: government fuel efficiency requirements. Rick Wagoner, chief executive of General Motors Corp., and his counterparts from Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Group appeared to come away with little.

The first ambassador of California's fledgling electric-vehicle industry comes out of the workshop today. Calstart, the public-private consortium whose goal is to foster an advanced transportation industry in California, will unveil its prototype electric car, built from parts made by 17 California companies.

Solo drivers of certain low- and zero-emission cars would have free access to carpool lanes, even if they're converted to toll lanes, under a bill that passed the California Assembly on Thursday. There are a number of projects in the state to make solo drivers pay to use the lanes, no matter what they're driving. Under the bill, those lanes will be free to solo drivers of cars with Clean Air Vehicle stickers. But in Southern California, there will be two exceptions, at least for a year.

Express mail giant FedEx Corp. is preparing to roll out the first of four new all-electric delivery trucks in Los Angeles next month, but Chief Executive Frederick W. Smith said there were still significant barriers to bringing large numbers of zero-emission and low-emission commercial vehicles into service quickly in the U.S. "We would like to significantly expand the number of vehicles we have in this category," Smith said. "But the capital costs are 50% higher than regular vehicles.

Adding momentum to the clean-car movement, General Motors Corp. announced plans Sunday to produce a low-emission hybrid-electric vehicle by 2001 and a fuel-cell-powered car by at least 2004. Both vehicles would still burn hydrocarbons--either gasoline, diesel fuel or methanol--but would get up to 80 miles per gallon and have a range comparable to today's gas-powered cars but with less than half the emissions.